The Sydney Dialogue
October 28, 2013 Time: 35:50
Summary
The second dialogue with Lawrence Krauss focuses on what is considered the greatest philosophical question of all time!
Transcript The Sydney Dialogue
Kevin Harris: Well, we knew there would be a lot to cover on this Australian tour. Welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. I’m Kevin Harris. Dr. Craig, we’re up to discussion on the second debate, the second debate location with Dr. Lawrence Krauss, which took place in Sydney. And I have to ask you, did you go into this second debate with some, you know, emotional qualms or reservations based on what happened in Brisbane?
Dr. Craig: Yes, Kevin, I certainly did. After what happened in Brisbane with those personal attacks I was not sure what to expect in Sydney. It was a new audience, a new topic. The topic was “Why is there something rather than nothing?” which is of course Lawrence Krauss’ bread and butter issue, his claim that physics can plausibly explain the origin of the universe from nothing. So I didn’t know whether or not he would launch the same personal attacks or, an even more frightening possibility, that he had other personal attacks that he might launch against me.
Kevin Harris: Waiting in the wings.
Dr. Craig: Yes, things that he had reserved. So I did not really know what to expect. I did feel very good about my prepared Sydney presentation because I felt it was much stronger than my presentation in Brisbane. In Brisbane the topic was “Has science buried God?” And what I did there, basically, was try to say that what Krauss has buried at best is a kind of caricature, a God of the gaps, and then I shared three ways in which science and theology profitably interact that don’t imply God of the gaps. And while I think that case is absolutely correct, it’s not exactly scintillating. It’s more academic; it’s not the sort of thing that pulls an audience out of its seat, so to speak. But for Sydney I had I thought a really very entertaining and engaging presentation with dynamite power points that Peter Byrom had helped prepare for me. And I felt that the Sydney case that I had to present was extremely strong and was entertaining for an audience. So yes it was with some trepidation that I went into this next event wondering what was going to happen.
Kevin Harris: Spiritually, let me talk about that a little bit. You’re on the hot seat and you’re a leader, a Christian leader and spokesperson, and people are going to watch you to see how you react. People have really applauded you for showing some restraint when you would have been perfectly justified to get up and say, “Audios. I’m not going to put up with this low level non-academic atmosphere. I’m not here for a circus. I’m not here for a grudge match.” But you stayed the course. After the first one there had to have been some prayer that went down.
Dr. Craig: Certainly. In these events Jan and I always pray about how they’ll go, and for God to give me calmness of spirit and a spirit or charity, because I realize that I’m a public representative of the Lord Jesus in these things and I don’t want to do anything that would bring disrepute upon him. And we’re so grateful for all of the people back in the United States and I think probably elsewhere that were upholding us in prayer during these dialogues, because it was very difficult.
Kevin Harris: In this opening speech you went straight to Leibniz and his famous quote: “The first question which should rightly be asked is: why is there something rather than nothing?”
Dr. Craig: Yes, it was Leibniz’s question that the organizers of the dialogue had selected as the topic for discussion that night: why is there something rather than nothing? So I quoted Leibniz’s statement and then I wanted to unpack it because I think that before you can even begin to talk about it you’ve got to understand the question. People like Heidegger and others have said this is the ultimate question of philosophy and of metaphysics – why does anything at all exist?
Kevin Harris: Well, Dr. Krauss’ attitude on this seems to be 1) physics can explain it, and 2) maybe just kind of flippant – like, who cares?
Dr. Craig: That’s right. He has a kind of double response to this question. One is to misconstrue the word ‘nothing’ in such a way that modern cosmology becomes relevant to the question. And then when you press him that this isn’t in fact the question Leibniz was posing, that philosophers are asking a much different question, then his response is to say, “Who cares? I don’t care about those metaphysical philosophical questions,” implying basically that you shouldn't care either.[1]
Kevin Harris: It’s very difficult and you do a definition here – to use nothing in a proper way when you’re trying to describe it. Because we start treating it like a thing, a handful of something, and we say, “and then you take the nothing [laughter] and then where there is nothing,” and yet that then implies a location. Now, we try to just talk in common language but still, the philosophical implications of what nothing really means are pretty . . .
Dr. Craig: I think this shows the value of philosophy. As you know, Kevin, Lawrence Krauss depreciates the value of philosophy. He thinks that all you need is science; philosophy is unimportant. And yet one of the most important tasks of philosophical analysis is the clarification of key concepts, definition of terms, and the drawing of distinctions to keep our thinking clear. And nowhere is this more evident than in dealing with this term “nothing.” And what I think one can easily show is that Dr. Krauss, because of his lack of philosophical acumen, seriously misuses this term as a term of reference to refer to something. And I must say, Kevin, in looking at Facebook posts after the debate, even despite my explanation of what the term means in English, I have been shocked, somewhat amused, but also disturbed, by the misunderstanding that still persists among people saying, “Well, how does Dr. Craig’s type of nothing explains this or that?” when the very thing that I’m saying is that nothing is not a type of anything; that that’s a misuse of the term. These folks have still not got the point. And what I explained in my opening speech is that the word “nothing” in the English language is just a term of universal negation. It means “not anything.” And there’s a whole series of words in English that are like this: nobody means not anybody, nowhere means not anywhere, no one means not anyone. So these are simply terms whereby one expresses a universal negation. So, to borrow one of my examples, if I say, “Nothing stopped the German advance from sweeping across Belgium,” that doesn’t mean that the German advance was stopped and that it was nothing that stopped it. Rather, what it means is the German advance was not stopped by anything. It’s a term of universal negation; it is not a term of reference.
Kevin Harris: You can’t stump your toe on nothing.
Dr. Craig: Right.
Kevin Harris: Yeah, okay. By the way my favorite line on Facebook was – all the accusations on our accidental errors on the podcast, which we corrected – someone wrote, “Well what do you know, Krauss really can make something out of nothing.” [laughter] That was pretty funny. But anyway. So we’re talking about the word nothing grammatically, as well.
Dr. Craig: Yes, that’s right. Yes, grammatically, how is this word used in English? And I point out that the confusion between nothing as a term of reference and as a term of universal negation is a distinction that is as old as literature itself, and give some examples from ancient Greek literature like Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus, you may remember, introduces himself to the Cyclops as No-man or No-one. So that later when the Cyclops is blinded by Odysseus and his fellow cyclopses yelled at him, they hear him screaming and they say, “What’s the matter?” And the Cyclops says, “No-one is murdering me; No-one is killing me.” And they say, “Well, if nobody is hurting you then you just must be sick and there’s nothing we can do about it.” So even as old as Homer they understood these kind of jokes where you use the word nothing not as a term of universal negation but as a term of reference.
Kevin Harris: What was your other reference about lunch?
Dr. Craig: Right. Yes, that’s right. “What did you have for lunch today, Kevin?” “I had nothing for lunch today.” “Oh, really? How did it taste?”
Kevin Harris: Yeah, tastes like chicken. [laughter]
Dr. Craig: Yeah, right. As I say in the opening speech, the use of the word nothing as a substantive term of reference is a joke.[2] This is a joke, people. And this is the way Dr. Krauss uses the word nothing. He has told us with a straight face for example that there are three kinds of nothing, and they have different properties. He has made all sorts of claims about nothing like, 70% of the stuff in the universe is nothing; nothing weighs something; nothing, he says, is almost everything. These kinds of claims are a joke, and we ought to realize that that is all that they are rather than think that this expresses some sort of profound truth.
Kevin Harris: Would you call this an equivocation, then? Is that the term?
Dr. Craig: Yes, I think that’s right. An equivocation means to use a word with two different meanings. And when you say that you had nothing for lunch today what you mean is “I did not have anything for lunch.” You don’t mean that “I did have something for lunch and it was nothing,” that there was this stuff that you ate was nothing. So it would be an equivocal use of the word to have different meanings. That would be one way to express it.
Kevin Harris: We’ve done podcasts on Dr. Krauss’ book A Universe from Nothing. Critics have also weighed in on this, and peers, and so forth. You give David Albert, an eminent philosopher of quantum physics, and what he said about the book. I think Dr. Albert would agree with you here of this use of nothing.
Dr. Craig: Oh, that’s absolutely right. He points out that in Krauss’ book, which he reviewed for the New York Times, what Krauss refers to as nothing is in every case a physical system; it is physical stuff which undergoes a change from one state to another, and he is not talking about nothing. So Albert, who is not a theist as far as I know, not a Christian, says, “Krauss is dead wrong and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right.” Now that just frosts Lawrence Krauss because the idea that religious people and philosophers could be right and he wrong is just intolerable for him because he thinks that these people know nothing, that they are utter incompetents; and yet, as Albert, this eminent philosopher of science points out, in this case the theologians and philosophers are absolutely right and Lawrence Krauss is dead wrong. This provoked, by the way, a very angry reaction to Albert’s review from Lawrence Krauss where he called Albert a moronic philosopher. And he was chastised for that by Daniel Dennett and certain other atheist philosophers and issued a sort for quasi-apology of sorts in the Scientific American. So I was interested to see how he was going to respond to this Albert quotation that I put out in my first speech as showing the mistake that Krauss had made in referring to these physical systems as nothing.
Kevin Harris: Lawrence seems to want to rescue the term “nothing” from the religious philosophical world. I think he thinks it’s too religious a question and he wants to keep it scientific. I mean, I get that that’s kind of an attitude.
Dr. Craig: I think that’s absolutely correct, Kevin. There’s a statement by Krauss that I quote in the speech from a dialogue he had at the Australian National University that I think is very revealing. He says the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” looks like a religious question. But, he says, “I use it to sneak in modern cosmology,” which is what he really wants to talk about it. And I think this is really unfortunate. Modern cosmology is fascinating enough in its own right that you don’t have to try to sneak it in by having it masquerade as an answer to a philosophical question like Leibniz’s question. In fact there’s a really interesting statement by Krauss in the Atlantic Magazine of April 23 of last year where he says when he writes a book he said, “Every time I try to think of a hook that will catch the audience’s attention.” And so he says this is his method of seducing the audience, and so in the case of saying the universe came from nothing, he says, “I want to provoke the audience so they say, ‘How can he say that? How can he have the temerity to suggest that it’s possible to get something from nothing?’” And he said “If I had just titled the book A Marvelous Universe, not as many people would have been attracted to it.”[3] So he titles it A Universe from Nothing knowing that that is misrepresenting the science in order to seduce people into buying his book, and making these outrageous claims that then people will be prompted to investigate, and making his book then a best seller.
Kevin Harris: What comes up in this as you continue talking about Leibniz – Leibniz’s question – is a universe with a beginning vs. an eternal universe. But Leibniz’s argument or his question really applies to all models.
Dr. Craig: In addition to the critique that I offered of Krauss’ view – that physics can plausibly explain the origin of the universe from nothing; which it cannot, it’s always talking about physical systems – I defend Leibniz’s own answer to the question he posed, which is an argument for God as a metaphysically necessary being who supplies the sufficient reason for the existence of everything else in the universe. And I state the Leibnizian argument and then defend its premises. And Krauss never seemed to really understand this argument from contingency. He constantly confuses it with the kalam cosmological argument for the existence of a creator based on the beginning of the universe. And you could defeat the kalam argument by showing the universe is eternal in the past; that it never had a beginning. But Leibniz was very explicit that his argument doesn’t assume that the universe had a beginning. Leibniz is very happy to admit that the universe is eternal in the past and the future. He even gives an example of what this might be like. He imagines a series of geometry books where each book is copied from the previous book, and this goes back into the infinite past without beginning. And Leibniz says you could still ask the question: why is there this eternal series of geometry books and why are such geometry books copied one after another from eternity? So you cannot escape Leibniz’s question by denying that the universe had a beginning. The question still remains, why is there an eternal universe rather than nothing or rather than one with a beginning or some other sort of universe?
Kevin Harris: Next you put up a power point of how Leibniz’s argument can be put into a syllogism – one, two, three, four, five points. And at this point the audience laughed, and they were laughing at Dr. Krauss who was making all kinds of faces and movements and everything at the second premise. So let’s look at this premise and see if we can find out why.
Dr. Craig: Sure. The first premise is that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, and when I stated the second premise – if the universe has an explanation of its existence that explanation is God – and at that point a lot of the atheists in the audience laughed. And to someone listening to the tape they’d think they’re laughing at the premise, that this premise seems so implausible or outrageous to them they laugh. In fact they’re not laughing at the premise. What happens at that point is that behind me on the stage Krauss in his chair throws his hands into the air and he rolls his head and rolls his eyes as if to say, “Oh, how ridiculous this is.” And the audience is reacting to Krauss’ histrionics on stage and laughing at what he’s doing because he’s goading the audience. When I get to defending the second premise, nobody is laughing, Kevin. When I get to the two arguments in support of that premise then there’s dead silence.
Kevin Harris: Because at that point you’re filling in the syllogism, which is required.
Dr. Craig: Filling in the argument, that’s right. First I simply stated the premises and then I say, “Are these premises more plausibly true than false?” And I then say, “Let’s look at each one of them.” And I go into a defense of premise (1). Ironically, Kevin – this is the funny part – that premise (1) is really the more controversial premise: that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence. But with the help of Peter Byrom’s beautiful power points illustrating the story of finding a ball out in the Outback and then expanding the size of the ball even until it’s the size of the universe no one in the dialogue or in the debate thought to question premise (1), even though that’s really the more controversial premise that the critic ought to attack.[4] Premise (2) – if the universe has an explanation of its existence that explanation is God – that’s the premise that Krauss ridicules and makes fun of. In the post-debate interview he says, this is the most ridiculous premise in the argument.
Kevin Harris: He says it’s the most ridiculous I’ve ever heard, I think.
Dr. Craig: But what he never does is interact with the two arguments that I give in defense of that premise.
Kevin Harris: I suppose he thinks that it’s just an insertion of God into the argument.
Dr. Craig: That’s right, a sort of punting to God to explain why the universe exists. But, in fact, it’s not and I give two arguments to support it. Stephen Davis is the Christian philosopher who defended this form of the Leibnizian argument that finally persuaded me that this is in fact a cogent argument. And the first argument in defense of premise (2) – to state it again, if the universe has an explanation of its existence that explanation is God – what Davis points out is that the second premise, which again is – if the universe has an explanation of its existence that explanation is God – that premise is virtually synonymous to what the atheist typically says in response to Leibniz’s argument. So that atheists by far and away largely agree with premise (2). Now, how is this to be shown? Well what does the atheist usually say in response to Leibniz’s argument? What he typically says is the following: if atheism is true the universe has no explanation of its existence. If atheism is correct then the universe is just a brute fact; it just exists inexplicably. So if atheism is true the universe has no explanation. And that’s what the atheist almost always says to Leibniz. Now notice that statement “if atheism is true the universe has no explanation of its existence” is logically equivalent to saying “if the universe has an explanation of its existence then atheism is not true.” These are called contrapositives of each other. It’s like saying, if atheism is true the universe has no explanation; if the universe does have an explanation then atheism is not true. Those two statements are logically equivalent to each other. When we say they’re logically equivalent we mean they’re either both true or they’re both false but it’s impossible for one to be true and the other one to be false because they state the same fact. So again, the atheist typically says, if atheism is true the universe has no explanation of its existence. That’s logically equivalent to saying, if the universe does have an explanation then atheism is not true. And that’s virtually synonymous with premise (2) which says that if the universe has an explanation of its existence that explanation is God. So far from being the controversial premise in the argument, this premise (2) is actually one that atheists typically agree with. But I think the defense that I gave of premise (1) was so convincing that the atheists all went to premise (2) to attack it even though that is almost a truism on atheism and not a controversial premise at all.
Kevin Harris: I want to unpack the use of explanation here for just a moment. It keys off the first premise: everything which exists has an explanation of its existence, Leibniz pointed out either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause; it’s either non-contingent or contingent.
Dr. Craig: Right.
Kevin Harris: A couple of things that I see here, Bill, and I just want you to clarify. Could the atheist say atheism is true and there is an explanation of the universe, but it’s a naturalistic explanation? How we use the word “explanation?”
Dr. Craig: I think that depends then on what you mean by the universe. I am using the word “universe” as a totalizing term. It would be the totality of contingent beings, and therefore there couldn’t be another contingent being outside of the totality of contingent beings which would explain the universe. So whether one uses the universe to mean our universe or the multiverse, or whatever, we’re talking about a kind of totalizing term here to describe all contingent beings.[5]
Kevin Harris: And really it shakes down to: there’s only one candidate if the universe has an explanation.
Dr. Craig: Well that seems right and that’s why most atheists would say that on atheism the universe has no explanation of its existence.
Kevin Harris: And you can even do it more modestly: the most plausible candidate for this – if the universe has an explanation, that explanation is God.
Dr. Craig: Right.
Kevin Harris: Why? Because a, b, c, d, e; because of these supports for this premise.
Dr. Craig: Yes, and it doesn’t tell us which God. Krauss very often responds to these arguments by asserting “which God, which God? The God of Islam, the God Judaism, the God of Christianity?” This argument doesn't decide that. Dr. Krauss loves the way in which science is uncertain and leaves questions open but he won’t allow that for natural theology. But this argument leaves it open as to which God we’re talking about. What it gives us is a metaphysically necessary, transcendent creator of the universe, and then we’ll identify more closely if this God has revealed himself in a special way in any of the world’s great religions.
Kevin Harris: The second argument, then.
Dr. Craig: The second supporting argument for premise (2) is that, not only do atheists typically agree with premise (2), but premise (2) is very plausible in its own right when you think about it. Just ask yourself, if the universe has an explanation then what could it be? This was the point you were hitting at just a moment ago, Kevin. The explanation of the universe would have to be some kind of transcendent reality: beyond time, beyond space, beyond all matter and energy, metaphysically necessary in its existence. Now what possible candidates could fill that role? Well, I can think of only two possible candidates to fill that role. Either an abstract object, and by that I mean something like a mathematical object (numbers, sets, and other mathematical entities are typically described as being transcendent, beyond space and time, immaterial and metaphysically necessary in their being). So an abstract object would fit the bill for those qualities. Or it could be a transcendent mind; that is to say, an unembodied consciousness, a person who is beyond space and time, immaterial, and metaphysically necessary in his existence. Now are there any arguments that would help us to decide between these two alternatives? Well, I think there’s a decisive argument and it’s this: abstract objects don’t stand in causal relationships. Indeed this is part of the definition of what it means to be abstract. The way in which philosophers typically differentiate between an abstract object and what is called a concrete object is that concrete objects have causal powers; they are causally efficacious in bringing about effects. Whereas abstract objects are causally effete; they have no causal powers, they are impotent. The number 7, for example, has no effect upon anything, it can’t cause anything. And therefore this decisively rules out abstract objects as being the explanation for the existence of the universe. And therefore I think it’s very plausible that the explanation of the existence of the universe is a metaphysically necessary, transcendent, non-spatiotemporal, immaterial person. And that is essentially what the theist means by God. So, not only do atheists typically agree with premise (2), but I think we’ve got a pretty good argument for premise (2) in its own right. And so premise (2), (which may appear at first controversial to our secular friends who are unfamiliar with it) I think, in fact, is a very persuasive premise.
Kevin Harris: It’s such an emotional resistance, sometimes. I mean, if everything can best be explained by a mind, a transcendent mind, rather than matter, it’s like people say, “Oh no, we can’t have that. Oh no, we can’t do that. We got to have matter, we can’t have a mind.” It’s philosophically neutral at that point. It’s emotionally neutral if things either go all the way back to matter or they go all the way back to mind. “Oh no, we can’t have a mind, though, because that means my Aunt Edna was right and she nagged me my whole life. And that means that the religious right . . .” I mean, go with the flow here.[6]
Dr. Craig: Yeah, it is interesting isn’t it, Kevin? Here is an argument that is so emotionally neutral, so abstract and logical, and yet, as you say, it arouses tremendous emotional resistance on the part of physicalists and materialists who do not want this conclusion.
Kevin Harris: They can’t have this; they can’t have it.
Dr. Craig: No, and notice, Kevin, that when the physicalist or the materialist resists the conclusion he’s begging the question. Because he’s assuming that minds cannot exist, that there cannot be an unembodied mind, which just is to presuppose atheism, right?
Kevin Harris: Yeah.
Dr. Craig: That is to beg the question against theism by presupposing atheism.
Kevin Harris: That’s right.
Dr. Craig: So it’s not a good objection.
Kevin Harris: And this mind hasn’t even convicted you of your sins yet; we haven’t gotten there yet.
Dr. Craig: [laughter] Yeah, but he might.
Kevin Harris: He might, yeah. He hasn’t told you to eat your veggies yet. We go further then as to whether this mind has revealed himself.
Dr. Craig: Yes, and that’s a later question.
Kevin Harris: Yeah, it’s a later question.
Dr. Craig: But what does Leibniz’s argument give us? What it gives us if it’s successful is a metaphysically necessary, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal creator of the universe. So this is no ill-conceived flying spaghetti monster or something of that sort. Someone in the audience, I think, asked, why couldn’t Elmo be the sufficient reason for the existence of the universe.
Kevin Harris: His voice is too high, for one thing.
Dr. Craig: It’s obvious that such a person has simply failed to understand the argument.
Kevin Harris: Well, it’s ill-conceived in that we’re talking about something spatial, something contingent.
Dr. Craig: Yeah, he’s spatial, he’s material, he’s contingent; it’s silly to say that Elmo the sock-puppet could be the sufficient reason for the existence of the universe. Now what you could do is you could name this metaphysically necessary creator “Elmo” if you want; instead of Yahweh or Jehovah call him Elmo. That’s fine, a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. So you can name him whatever you want, but you can’t, I think, plausibly substitute for Leibniz’s conclusion these contingent material entities and suggest that they play this role just as adequately.
Kevin Harris: Bill, let’s wrap up today by talking about some of Dr. Krauss’ responses to some of these. Are there any that jump out at you?
Dr. Craig: This was the remarkable thing, I thought, about the Sydney dialogue, Kevin. In this dialogue more than any of the three, Krauss really collapsed. He never came back on the defense of his claim that physics makes it plausible that something can come from nothing. In the face of my critique of that he offered no re-defense of his position, which is, as I say, his bread and butter thesis that is the basis of his book and of his notoriety. So that to me really stood out in this debate – the complete collapse of his central claim that physics offers plausible explanations of how the universe could come from nothing. With respect to the Leibnizian argument, again, he had no well thought through response to this. His response was to say, if the universe is eternal in the past, or if the multiverse is eternal in the past, then this somehow escapes Leibniz’s question. And the reason was, I think, Kevin, is he conflates Leibniz’s argument with the kalam cosmological argument. The kalam cosmological argument asks, “How could the universe come into existence out of nothing?” That is to say, how could it come to be if there was not anything before it causally? But the Leibnizian argument doesn’t ask that. The Leibnizian argument doesn’t assume that the universe came into being. It’s perfectly content to presuppose an eternal universe. And then it asks the question, why is there this eternally existing universe rather than nothing? Or, why is there this eternal multiverse instead of nothing? So Dr. Krauss’ attempted response to Leibniz by simply appealing to the past eternity of the universe was vain.
Kevin Harris: You’ve made the statement that when you look at the transcript of a debate you can really probably get to more of the meat because there aren't as many visual distractions, inflections of voice, and so on.[7] And so read the transcripts to get – what? – a more accurate look at what went on?
Dr. Craig: Yes, I think that’s right. There’s a good deal of information that’s shared in this. And I found in reading the transcripts, or proof-reading them, I was shocked at what a different impression one gets than when you’re listening to the debate orally and it goes by so quickly. When you read the transcripts it enables you to see the sentences static, printed out, right there, unmoving, unchanging, and you can weigh their truth value and assess their relevance, and I think that the person who studies these transcripts will have a great deal to learn by the arguments that are shared.[8]